Embroidered Tondo from an Altar Frontal: The Coronation of the Virgin (1459): Art, History and Details

Embroidered Tondo from an Altar Frontal: The Coronation of the Virgin (1459) is in the Cleveland Museum of Art collection.

The work and its context

The museum's open-access catalogue describes the work:

This masterpiece of Florentine embroidery takes the circular form called a tondo and was likely once attached to an altar frontal. The scene depicts the coronation of the Virgin, the final and culminating event in the narrative cycle of her life. Honoring her as queen of heaven, Christ places the crown on his mother’s head. They are surrounded by eight angels as well as Saints Verdiana and John Gualberto, both much esteemed in Florence, creating a joyous scene. During the Renaissance, Florence emerged as an important center for a specific type of embroidery known as or nué, or shaded gold. This stunning technique used metal and silk threads, as seen here, to create pictures that rivaled paintings. It was frequently used for vestments and altar frontals.

Object facts

• Title: Embroidered Tondo from an Altar Frontal: The Coronation of the Virgin
• Date: 1459
• Culture: Italy, Florence
• Type: Embroidery
• Technique: Embroidery with gold, silver, and silk thread; split, satin, and couching stitches, or nué (shaded gold)
• Dimensions: Overall: 57.8 x 57.8 cm (22 3/4 x 22 3/4 in.)
• Collection: T - Ecclesiastical
• Department: Textiles
• Accession number: 1953.129

Collection credit

Purchase from the J. H. Wade Fund

Further reading listed by the museum

• Royal Academy of Arts (Great Britain). Exhibition of Italian Art, 1200-1900. London: Royal Academy of Arts, 1930.
• Shepherd, Dorothy G. "A Fifteenth-Century Florentine Embroidery." The Bulletin of the Cleveland Museum of Art 41, no. 10 (1954): 211-13.
• The Cleveland Museum of Art. The Cleveland Museum of Art Handbook. Cleveland, OH: The Cleveland Museum of Art, 1958.

View the collection record

See the museum's photographs and full catalogue entry. Catalogue text is reproduced from the Cleveland Museum of Art's open-access data, with HTML formatting removed. This object and its supplied image are designated CC0.